THE NORTHAMPTONSHIRE SURVEY 



All Saints was added to the fief held by the house of Ferrers, while the 

 Dudley fief was increased by land being granted at Boddington to Pay- 

 nel. Of fresh families brought into the county, one may mention that 

 of Balliol (from Picardy), which obtained Crown demesne at Faxton and 

 at Moulton, probably from William Rufus, and that of Hasculf de St. 

 James(-sur-Beuvron), on the borders of Normandy and Britanny, who 

 held, probably under Henry I., the Crown manor of Tansor. 



How this Survey assumed the form in which it has reached us 

 cannot be stated with certainty. But although we find, here and there, 

 the name of an actual Domesday tenant, the document, as a whole, gives 

 the impression that a Survey made under Henry I. was corrected, more 

 or less, by alterations and additions, to bring the entries up to date, down 

 to the days of Henry II. The late transcriber, to whom is due the 

 existing text, failed altogether to understand the Survey, and incorporated 

 in a single text all the additions and corrections, with the most be- 

 wildering result. This hypothesis is supported by the cases of other 

 manuscripts. We trace, for instance, the same process in The Red Book 

 of the Exchequer. In The Black Book the later additions that were made 

 to the barons' returns of their fees in 1166 are distinguished by the 

 difference in handwriting ; but in The Red Book these interpolations are 

 found transcribed in the same hand as the genuine original returns. To 

 the uninitiated this has been the cause of no small confusion. In 

 Northamptonshire alone there are such entries for the tenure of Nassing- 

 ton and Yarwell by Earl David of Huntingdon (i 184-12 19), for that of 

 Gretton by Walter de Preston, and for that of Higham Ferrers, New- 

 bottle, and Blisworth by Ferrers earl of Derby. It is remarkable that, 

 quite recently, in a learned dissertation on the heirship of Ferrers to the 

 fref of Peverel, this last entry is cited from The Red Book as proof that 

 Ferrers held these manors in 11 66,' though they were not obtained by 

 the Ferrers family till the reign of John. Again, in the Peterborough 

 list of the abbey's knights, the very first entry, made temp. Henry I., has 

 been carried on by a later hand to the time of Henry III. But there 

 Stapleton, who transcribed the list, carefully discriminated between the 

 two hands. ^ It is probable that the lists of Abingdon knights, published 

 in the Abingdon Cartulary, are rendered untrustworthy in places by the 

 cause of error described above. So also the Lindsey Survey {temp. 

 Henry I.) illustrates how some errors made their way into our Survey. 

 In that Survey, above the entry ' Comes Odo [tenet] in Aldobi,' a later 

 hand has interlined ' De feodo Comitis Albemerle.' It is by incorporat- 

 ing such additions that our Survey has produced the phrases ' Willelmus 

 Meschin de feodo Willelmi de Curcy,' 'Robertus filius Regis de feodo 

 Glovernie,' ' Brien filius Comitis de feodo de Wallinford,' and ' Odo 

 dapifer de feodo de Colcestra.' These phrases do not mean, as they 

 would be naturally supposed to mean, that the tenants named held their 



' See Complete Peerage, VIII. 369-70. 

 ' Chronicon Petrohurgenu (Camden Society), pp. 1 68-9. 

 361 



